On a dark night in central Alaska, the sky might be lit with green and red lights four out of every five nights. These lights are the famous northern lights. Despite their name, the northern lights can be seen much further south than Alaska. They have been seen as far south as Mexico and even […]
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This month there are several astronomy events involving the moon. Next week on September 17 the moon will briefly hide the planet Saturn. This event called an occultation will happen in the early morning. It will be visible from the Western United States, southwestern Canada, and northwestern Mexico. Saturn will disappear behind the moon between
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On April 8 this year, most of North America will see a solar eclipse. 49 of the 50 states will see at least a partial eclipse, though most of Alaska will miss out. For certain parts of North America, the eclipse will be total. The path of totality will cross Texas, the corner of Oklahoma,
Between three and a half hours to four hours after sunset, the stars Mirzam and Sirius rise. As I have mentioned in past posts, Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. But it wasn’t always that way. Around four million years ago, Mirzam was the brightest star in the sky, about seven times brighter
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Science Snippet: The 2023 Eclipse On Saturday, October 14, an annular solar eclipse was visible from parts of North and Central America. Much of the rest of the Americas saw a partial solar eclipse. A solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between the sun and the earth. Solar eclipses come in three kinds. Partial
Science Snippet: Explore The Closest Stars On a clear night with extremely dark conditions, there can be as many as 6,000 stars visible to the naked eye. Some of these stars are bright and noticeable whereas others are barely visible pinpricks of light. You might expect that the bright prominent stars are the closest ones.
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Science Snippet: Explore The Ice Giants Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants; Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. The ice giants both have extremely thick atmospheres made of hydrogen and helium. Uranus has a small amount of methane in its atmosphere as well which gives the planet a blue-green color. Neptune has a dark blue
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Science Snippet: Explore Saturn Saturn is currently 824 million miles from the Earth. Over the next few weeks, it will come within 816 million miles before receding again. For Saturn, this is fairly close; at times, it is more than a billion miles away! Still, 824 million miles is a very long distance. In my
Science Snippet: Explore The Moon What object in the solar system is closest to the Earth? The closest object is our moon. On average the moon is 238,900 miles away. That distance is almost ten times the circumference of the Earth. This sounds like a long way, but it’s close compared to the other objects
